Genevieve POV

My father has always loved me the way a man loves a prize racehorse: he only cares when I’m winning. And right now? I was limping.

The newspaper on my rickety kitchen table was open to page six. The headline screamed up at me in bold, black letters:

DON ARLINGTON FOLEY NAMES NEPHEW SUCCESSOR.

The ink smeared under my thumb as I pressed down, trying to anchor myself. It was less a news article and more a public execution of my birthright.

When my phone rang again, the screen lit up with the one name I dreaded.

It was him.

I stared at the screen, my heart hammering a painful, erratic rhythm against my ribs. With a shaking hand, I answered.

"I saw the paper," I said, my voice raspy from lack of use.

"It is complicated, Genevieve," Don said. He didn't sound like the Godfather of the city in that moment. He sounded like a politician caught in a scandal. "I have responsibilities. The Commission demanded a strong heir. You... you chose to leave."

"I chose to breathe," I corrected him, my grip tightening on the phone. "You chose to suffocate me."

"I am trying to protect you," he said. The lie was so smooth it almost sounded like truth. "If you are out of the line of succession, you are not a target."

"I am living in a basement apartment with mold on the walls, Papa. I am a target for pneumonia, not hitmen."

"Are you eating?" he asked.

The sudden pivot to parental concern made my stomach turn.

"Don't," I whispered. "Don't pretend you care about my health when you're the one who cut off the oxygen."

"I love you, Gen. But I am the Don first, and a father second."

"That's the problem," I said. "You think love is a transaction. You think if you say it enough times, it excuses the knife in my back."

"You are being dramatic."

"I am being erased!" I shouted.

The door to my apartment didn't just open; it banged against the wall with a violence that shook the frame.

I jumped, dropping the phone.

It wasn't the police. It wasn't a hitman.

It was Everleigh.

She swept into the tiny room like a hurricane wrapped in Chanel. The scent of expensive vanilla instantly overpowered the smell of damp mildew.

She spotted the phone on the floor. She saw the caller ID.

"Daddy issues?" she sneered.

I scrambled to pick up the phone. "Get out, Everleigh."

"Don't be rude," she said, kicking the door shut with a sharp click of her stiletto heel. "I came to check on the poor relation."

"Papa," I said into the phone, panic rising in my throat. "Everleigh is here."

"Put her on," Don commanded.

"She broke into my house!"

"Put. Her. On."

I felt my blood turn to ice. He wasn't listening. He never listened.

I held the phone out to her.

Everleigh took it, her smile sharp enough to cut glass.

"Don Arlington," she purred. "Yes, I'm just checking on her. She seems... unstable. Yes. Of course. I'll handle it."

She hung up.

She didn't hand the phone back. Instead, she dropped it casually into her purse.

"He's worried about you," she lied. "He thinks you're going to embarrass the family again."

"Why are you here?" I asked. My hands were shaking uncontrollably now.

"To help."

She opened her bag and pulled out a stack of cash. Rubber-banded hundreds, thick and crisp.

She threw them at me.

They hit my chest with a dull thud and fluttered to the floor like dead leaves.

"Buy some new clothes," she said, her eyes scanning my outfit with disgust. "You look like a beggar. It reflects poorly on my fiancé."

*My* fiancé.

My cousin.

"I don't want your money," I said.

"It's not mine. It's Ignatz's." She laughed, a cruel, tinkling sound. "Oh, didn't you know? He borrowed it from me. To fund that little 'business' of his. He's terrible with money, Gen. Just like he's terrible in bed. But you know that."

She was rewriting my reality in real-time. Ignatz borrowing money from her?

"You're lying," I said.

"Am I?" She stepped closer, invading my space. She smelled of wealth and malice. "Look at you. You gave up a throne for a court jester. And now you're just... debris."

She stepped on one of the bills, grinding her heel into Benjamin Franklin's face.

"Pick it up," she commanded.

I looked at the money.

I looked at her.

I remembered the times I covered for her when we were teenagers. The times I took the blame when she crashed her car. I remembered thinking we were family.

"No," I said.

"Pick it up, or I tell the Don you threatened me."

Before I could react, she snatched a ceramic vase from my table—a cheap thing I bought to feel human—and smashed it on the floor.

The crash was deafening in the small room.

Then she screamed.

"Help! Don't hit me!"

She ripped her own blouse, buttons pinging off the floorboards.

My phone, still in her purse, started ringing.

She pulled it out and answered on speaker.

"Don! She's crazy! She attacked me because I offered her help!"

"Genevieve!" My father's voice roared from the speaker, vibrating with rage. "Do not touch her!"

"I didn't—"

"Everleigh is innocent in this! She is trying to bridge the gap! If you hurt her, you hurt me!"

I looked at the two of them.

The voice of the man who gave me life, and the woman who was stealing it.

They were a united front.

I was the enemy.

"Is that your love, Papa?" I asked, my voice deadly calm. "Is this your honor?"

"Don't lecture me on honor," he spat. "Apologize to her."

I looked at Everleigh. She was smirking behind her fake tears, a predator playing the victim.

"No," I said.

And I hung up the phone.

Genevieve POV

The dead silence following the click of the disconnected line was the loudest sound I had ever heard.

Everleigh dropped the act instantly. The fake crying ceased as if she’d flipped a switch.

She looked at the phone clutched in my hand, then up at me.

"You're going to regret that," she whispered.

"Get out," I said.

She grabbed her purse. "Gladly. This place smells like failure."

She stepped gingerly over the broken vase and the scattered cash, slamming the door behind her with a finality that rattled the frame.

I stood there for a long time.

Until my legs gave out.

I sank to the floor, amidst the shards of cheap ceramic and the dirty money.

I didn't cry.

I was past crying.

I felt a strange, cold clarity settle over me.

It was over.

The hope that my father would wake up, that he would finally see me, that he would choose me... it was a cancer. And I had just cut it out.

I looked at the window.

Snow was falling.

Thick, heavy flakes that covered the grime of the city in pristine white.

I stood up.

I put on my coat.

I grabbed the velvet box with the sapphire necklace—the bribe he had given me in the alley.

I walked out.

I didn't wait for a bus. I walked.

Five miles of pavement and ice to the Foley estate.

The cold bit through my thin coat, numbing my skin, matching the hollow numbness in my chest.

When I arrived at the gates, they were open.

Cars were streaming in. Bentleys. Rolls Royces. A river of polished steel and arrogance.

The engagement party.

I slipped through the side gate, the invisible entrance the staff used.

I knew the shadows of this house better than anyone.

I stood by the edge of the rose garden, hidden by the gnarled trunk of a large oak tree.

The house was glowing.

Golden light spilled from every window, mocking the dark.

I could hear the music. A string quartet playing Vivaldi.

I saw them through the French doors of the ballroom.

My father stood on a raised platform.

His arm was around Everleigh.

She was wearing a white dress, looking like a virgin sacrifice who had learned to hold the knife herself.

My cousin stood on the other side, looking bored and rich.

My father raised a glass.

I couldn't hear the words, but I saw the adoration in the room.

The applause rippled like a wave.

He kissed Everleigh on the forehead.

A fatherly kiss.

The kiss he used to give me before he realized I had a mind of my own.

He had replaced me.

Not just as an heir. But as a daughter.

I looked down at the velvet box in my hand.

I walked to the garden wall, where the snow was deepest.

I dug a small hole with my frozen fingers, clawing at the hard earth.

I dropped the box in.

I didn't just bury a necklace.

I buried Gen Foley.

I covered it with snow and patted it down.

"Goodbye, Papa," I whispered.

The wind snatched the words away.

Inside, the music swelled.

I turned my back on the light, on the warmth, on the lies.

I walked back into the dark.

I returned to the basement apartment.

It was empty.

Ignatz wasn't there.

I looked at the calendar.

Two days until the launch.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

My feet were blue from the cold.

But I felt lighter.

I had no father. I had no family.

I only had myself.

And for the first time in my life, that had to be enough.